1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to fluid reaction surfaces, and more specifically to a showerhead arrangement for a turbine airfoil.
2. Description of the Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98
A gas turbine engine includes a turbine section with a plurality of stages of stationary vanes and rotary blades to extract mechanical energy from a hot gas flow passing through the turbine. The gas turbine engine efficiency can be increased by providing for a higher temperature of the gas flow entering the turbine. The temperature entering the turbine is limited to the first stage vane and rotor blades ability to withstand the high temperature.
One method of allowing for higher temperatures than the material properties of the first stage vane and blades would allow is to provide for cooling air passages through the airfoils. Since the cooling air used to cool the airfoils is generally bled off from the compressor, it is also desirable to use a minimum amount of bleed off air in order to improve the efficiency of the engine. The compressor performs work on the compressed air to compress the bleed air for use in cooling the airfoils, and this work is wasted.
The hottest part of the airfoils is found on the leading edge. Complex designs have been proposed to provide the maximum amount of cooling for the leading edge while using the minimum amount of cooling air. One leading edge airfoil design is the showerhead arrangement. In the Prior Art, a blade leading edge showerhead comprises three rows of cooling holes as shown in FIG. 1. The showerhead arrangement 10 of the Prior Art includes a cooling air supply channel 11, a metering hole 13, a showerhead cavity 12, and a plurality of film cooling holes 14. The middle film row is positioned at the airfoil stagnation point which is where the highest heat load is found on the airfoil leading edge. The cooling hole labeled as 14 is FIG. 1 with the arrow indicating the cooling air flow is the stagnation point. Film cooling holes for each row are at an inline pattern and at a staggered array relative to the adjacent film row as seen in FIG. 3. The showerhead cooling holes 14 are inclined at 20 to 35 degrees relative to the blade leading edge radial surface as shown in FIG. 2.
The Prior Art showerhead arrangement of FIGS. 1-3 suffers from the following problems. The heat load onto the blade leading edge region is in parallel to the film cooling hole array, and therefore reduces the cooling effectiveness. The portion of the film cooling holes within each film row is positioned behind each other as shown in FIG. 2 that reduces the effective frontal convective area and conduction distance for the oncoming heat load. Realistic minimum film hole spacing to diameter ratio is approximately at 3.0. Below this ratio, zipper effect cracking may occur for the film row. This translates to maximum achievable film coverage for that particular film row to be 33% or 0.33 film effectiveness for each showerhead film row. Since the showerhead film holes are at radial orientation, film pattern discharge from the film hole is overlapped to each other. Little or no film is evident in-between film holes.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide for an improved showerhead arrangement for a turbine airfoil that will use less cooling air than the Prior Art arrangement and produce more cooling of the leading edge.